Extortion at Audiogalaxy

Ever since Audiogalaxy, the largest MP3-devoted P2P system in the world, introduced its payable AG Gold version, people have been wondering: will it mean that the regular version will be discontinued? It seems that AG really thinks of taking this path: instead of making AG Gold rich in new features and free from the bugs of the regular one, they simply *remove* useful features normally available for all regular users one by one, and add them to the Gold version. For the past few days, the biggest uproar on AG boards is Greedy Mike’s (the AG owner) latest decision to decrease the queue size of regular users: the queue limit for non-paying members has been dropping by 10 each day, with requested songs being removed from the users’ lists. At the moment, it’s at 130 and there is no telling if it will continue to drop. The users are “encouraged” to buy the Gold version to have a normal queue, somewhat as it took place in the 1930s in Chicago, where shop owners were “encouraged” to pay one Al Capone for protection…